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Friday, 29 February 2008

Please forgive more than a hint of self promotion (Well I am a blogger so what can you expect?) in this posting. I've recently written an Action Research Toolkit, aimed mainly at language teachers, but it may well be of use to teachers in other disciplines too, which has now been published on a pretty impressive new British Council website in China.

The action research toolkit is split into various components with articles on a possible research cycle, planning research as well as suggestions for how to use video and audio recordings in your research, how to design questionnaires and even some downloadable tasks and tip sheets.

What I like best about the site though is that it's one of the British Council's bravest attempts to really build a site that is very 'Web 2.0'. They have really tried to take on board and encourage the building of a sense of ownership and community within the site's user base.

Registered users can create their own blogs, get involved in forums and vote, comment on and rate the content.

I think this is a bold step forward for the British Council and a site that's well worth checking out whether you are based in China or not.

Thursday, 28 February 2008

Well Microsoft had to go one better than Google's Earth and bring you the whole universe! I've just been watching an amazing video from the TED Talks website. It's about the new WorldWide Telescope that Microsoft will be launching in the Spring of this year. This will enable web users to explore the universe in close up detail by drawing on imagery from a whole range of the world's most powerful telescopes.

The images and capabilities being described on the video look really amazing. Well worth a watch!

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

This is a great free online game called GoalUnited. It isn't designed for education at all but I'm sure anyone who is keen on developing their English and has an interest in football would enjoy it and get a lot of vocabulary and reading practice from it.

The game is played in a similar manner to the popular Football manager computer game and each player builds up a team and plays against other teams online.

As I said it's free. It is available to play in other languages too so make sure your students choose to play it in the language they want to learn rather than the one they already speak.

I'm not really a football fan myself so I haven't really spent time with this, but for students that are, I'm sure it could be very motivational.

Monday, 25 February 2008

This is a great site for revising vocabulary (at a higher level) and helping to donate food to the UN World Food Program. There is an audio of a word and students have to choose the correct synonym (there's a choice of four). For every correct answer Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice.

The site also rates the level of your vocabulary and sneds you more difficult questions if you are getting the answers.

Great vocabulary building and a worthy charity all in one.I found it pretty addictive. Try it at Free Rice

Friday, 22 February 2008

This week the Big Think is running a feature to coincide with Black History Month. It includes videos from Black American leaders from a wide range of fields and backgrounds giving their thoughts and reflections on race and identity issues.

This is great material for basing lessons around and should promote a lot of discussion within your classroom.

As ever with sensitive issues, you'll have to handle this carefully, but watching the videos is a good way of raising awareness, without having to tackle the issues head-on.

Thursday, 21 February 2008

Handbrake is a really useful piece of free software I've been using recently. It enables you to convert and even edit DVDs so that you can play them on other devices. This includes a range of mobile devices like i-pod and Sony PSP as well as just playing them on your computer / TV.It also gives you the option of copying them with the subtitles showing or just saving particular scenes and reduces the file sizes for storing back ups of your DVDs.

It's really useful and runs on a range of platforms MAC and Linux as well as Windows.

Wednesday, 13 February 2008

iDesktop.tv provides a really useful and user friendly service for anyone who wants to use video clips from sources like YouTube, but doesn't want their students looking around at anything unsuitable, or for anyone who has ever found a really useful clip, only to go back later and find it has moved or been removed.

You can use the site to search through a huge collection of videos from various video sharing sites and when you find something you like the site will download and convert it to a file type of your choosing.

The range of file types is great and includes ones suitable for mobile phones and i-pods, so if you want to get your students doing some mobile learning then this is a seriously useful site.
The site is free and you can use it without login or registration, though if you do register, it's free and you do get other services too.

Hope you find this useful and by all means leave a comment here if you've tried it.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

This is something I'm finding really useful right now. It's called Instapaper and it's something similar to a temporary bookmarking system. If you go to the site and create a log in, you can then drag a small icon from the page and onto your bookmarks tool bar. The icon looks like this:

Once the icon is in your tool bar you simply click it every time you find a page or an article on the web that you would like to read later (but don't have time at the moment) and it will create an entry on your Instapaper account page.

Then when you have time to read you go to the page and click on the links to the articles you want to read. The site then marks them read, allows you to delete them or if you prefer you can annotate them and keep them saved.

This must be a really handy tool for anyone doing web based research. It saves you having to bookmark a whole lot of stuff that you might want to delete later and is really quick and easy to set up and use.

Unfortunately, it won't read the articles for you though. Wonderful little tool, hope you find it useful.